Month: April 2017

Of all the four units we’ve worked on this semester, it’s video that I’m most familiar with. While I don’t shoot and edit video much for work, I love to dabble in it as a hobby (when I can find time). For this project, I wanted to touch upon water conservation. In earlier projects, I covered energy conservation, but water is also part of my work outreach as well.

I decided on creating a public service announcement (PSA) on saving water. It’s a cross between an informational video and a promotional one. However, the best approach I wanted to take was at a “point-of-view” stance after watching a Reuter’s video on Youtube. I also purchased a GoPro camera last year and thought it would be a great opportunity to put it to use.

I’m almost never in front of the camera but for this video shoot, I knew I was the only talent that could do it. So, I enlisted my capable husband to be behind the camera. I borrowed my office’s camera equipment mainly because it came with a wireless microphone. This video was shot with a Canon VIXIA HG G30 digital video camera and my GoPro Hero4 action camera.

I created a script based off an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brochure I have in the office. We went to the beach park after work to film but we lost the sunlight in a short amount of time. We had to continue filming at a different location a couple of days later.

Filming the GoPro shots was actually tons of fun. There’s this really cool option to use their GoPro app when filming. It made it very easy to set up the camera shot in the planter and in the washing machine with the GoPro.

When it was finally time for editing, organization was my best friend. With so many takes, I had to set up bins to make sense of all the clips. I organized bins by camera, then scene, and what was usable and not. That made editing “easier” in terms of having to sift through numerous clips.

After some feedback from my peers with my draft video, I attempted to lower the background noise of the opening shot by using an audio effect, Adaptive Noise Reduction. However, I don’t think it made a difference in reducing the background noise. For the ending, I also faded to black sooner after the credit rolls on a note from my groupmate. I also made the credit roll go slower for readability and the font size a bit larger, too.

Also, I changed up the way the text appeared on screen for the additional tips section on the suggestion of one of my group members. I made the first bullet point show up then move up when the second bullet point appeared on screen. Here, too, I made the text bigger for readability.

I also tried to slow down the speed of my voiceover to allow more time to read the text. Unfortunately, that made me sound like Death himself (as in a really low voice). It didn’t sound right so I reverted back to the original. I couldn’t re-record the voiceover to talk slower because I lost my voice the past couple weeks and my voice just sounds terrible right now.

I considered taking video or a picture of the WaterSense and ENERGY STAR logos but I felt I would be stepping into a gray area of copyright so I abandoned the idea and stuck with the original background I used in my draft story.

Lastly, I added in a “bug” on the bottom right hand corner for the department’s logo (used with permission) that stays on for the entire video. I also added a lower third for my name and title when I introduce myself. I created that lower third in Illustrator using a “Video and Film” template so I could see the “safe margins” when creating it so to make sure that the transparent white bar bled off the screen. I imported in the actual Illustrator file into Premiere and adjusted the position accordingly.

Here’s my updated storyboard for the PSA. There were only minor revisions from the original.

Of all the four units we’ve worked on this semester, it’s video that I’m most familiar with. While I don’t shoot and edit video much for work, I love to dabble in it as a hobby (when I can find time). For this project, I wanted to touch upon water conservation. In earlier projects, I covered energy conservation, but water is also part of my work outreach as well.

I decided on creating a public service announcement (PSA) on saving water. It’s a cross between an informational video and a promotional one. However, the best approach I wanted to take was at a “point-of-view” stance after watching a Reuter’s video on Youtube. I purchased a GoPro camera last year and thought it would be a great opportunity to put it to use.

I’m almost never in front of the camera but for this video shoot, I knew I was the only talent that could do it. So, I enlisted my capable husband to be behind the camera. I borrowed my office’s camera equipment mainly because it came with a wireless microphone. This video was shot with a Canon VIXIA HF G30 digital video camera and my GoPro Hero4 action camera.

I’d like to preface my shooting process by emphasizing that, I AM NOT AN ACTOR! With that said, shooting the scenes with my on-camera dialogue took what felt like forever. I created a script based off an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brochure I have in the office. We went to the beach park after work to film but because of my many script outtakes and hair flubs (as well as sound issues with wind, airplanes and crowds of people), we lost the sunlight in a short amount of time. We had to continue filming at a different location a couple of days later. That was ill-planned on my part as I thought I could get all the filming done before dark but didn’t factor in all the elements that could delay shooting.

Filming the GoPro shots was actually tons of fun. We shot around our house and despite wasting water (how ironic), wasting toothpaste and getting drenched from the shower, at least it forced my husband and I to clean our bathroom and bathtub for the shoot. There’s this really cool option to use their GoPro app when filming. It made it very easy to set up the camera shot in the planter and in the washing machine with the GoPro.

When it was finally time for editing, organization was my best friend. With so many takes, I had to set up bins to make sense of all the clips. I organized bins by camera, then scene, and what was usable and not. That made editing “easier” in terms of having to sift through numerous clips.

My editing process deviated from my original storyboard but I think that organically happens when you start looking through footage and seeing “new” things. Sound is what I worked on the most in Premiere as I wanted the foley sounds of water of the shot overlay with the voiceover dialogue, too. So that was most challenging.

I may consider adding music to the video but I did like the sounds of the ocean waves. If I end up using that, I may need to pump up the sound for it higher but still on the fence for that. But otherwise, I hope the video served its purpose and viewers got the gist of the “story.”